sitting on the sea wall talking quietly about the dead Barak Moore. They had been stunned because Ferguson had been expansive about his day-off plans in Mo'Bay.
Ferguson arrived looking haggard, a nervous wreck. The assumption was that he had overindulged and was hung to his fuzzy-cheeked gills; the jokes were along this line, and he accepted them with a singular lack of humour. But Sam Tucker did not subscribe to the explanation. James Ferguson was not ravaged by the whiskey input of the night before; he was a frightened young man who had not slept. His fear, thought Sam, was not anything he cared to discuss; indeed, he would not even talk about his night in Montego, brushing it off as as dull, unrewarding interlude. He appeared only to want company, as if there was immediate security in the familiar. He seemed to cling to the presence of Alison Booth, offering to fetch and carry... A schoolboy's crush or a fagot's devotion? Neither fit, for he was neither.
He was afraid.
Very inconsistent behaviour, concluded Sam Tucker.
Tucker suddenly heard the quiet, rapid footsteps behind him and turned. Lawrence, fully clothed now, came across the terrace from the west lawn. The black revolutionary walked over to Sam and knelt - not in fealty, but in a conscious attempt to conceal his large frame behind the sea wall. He spoke urgently.
'I don't like what I see and hear, mon.'
'What's the matter?'
'John Crow hide wid' block chicken!'
'We're being watched?' Tucker put down the newspaper and sat forward.
'Yes, mon. Three, four hours now.'
'Who?'
'A digger been walking on the sand since morning. Him keep circling the west-cove beach too long for tourist leave-behinds. I watch him good. His trouser pants rolled up, look too new, mon. I go behind in the woods and find his shoes. Then I know the trouser pants, mon. Him policeman.'
Sam's gnarled features creased in thought. 'Alex spoke with the Falmouth police around 9.30. In the lobby... He said there were two: a chief and an Indian.'
'What, mon?'
'Nothing... That's what you saw. What did you hear?'
'Not all I saw.' Lawrence looked over the sea wall, east towards the centre beach. Satisfied, he returned his attention to Sam. 'I follow the digger to the kitchen alley, where he waits for a man to come outside to speak with him. It is the clerk from the lobby desk. Him shake his head many times. The policeman angry, mon.'
'But what did you hear, boy?'
'A porter-fella was plenty near, cleaning snapper in his buckets. When the digger-policeman left I ask him hard, mon. He tell me this digger kep' asking where the American fella went, who had telephoned him.'
'And the clerk didn't know.'
'That's right, mon. The policeman was angry.'
'Where is he now?'
'Him wait down at the east shore.' Lawrence pointed over the sea wall, across the dunes to a point on the other side of the central beach. 'See? In front of the sunfish boats, mon.'
Tucker picked up the binoculars and focused on the figure near the shallow-bottomed sailboats by the water. The man and boats were about four hundred yards away. The man was in a torn green T-shirt and rumpled baseball cap; the trousers were a contradiction. They were rolled up to the knees, like most scavengers of the beach wore them, but Lawrence was right, they were creased, too clean. The man was chatting with a cocoruru peddler, a thin, very black Jamaican who rolled a wheelbarrow filled with coconuts up and down the beach, selling them to the bathers, cracking them open with a murderous-looking machete. From time to time the man glanced over towards the west-wing terraces, directly into the binoculars, thought Sam. Tucker knew the man did not realize he was being observed; if he did, the reaction would appear on his face. The only reaction was one of irritation, nothing else.
'We'd better supply him with the proper information, son,' said Sam, putting down the binoculars.
'What, mon?'
'Give him something to soothe that anger... So he won't think about it too much.'
Lawrence grinned. 'We make up a story, eh, mon?'
'Eh, mon,' replied Sam smiling. 'A casual, very believable kind of story.'
'McAuliff went shopping at Ochee, maybe? Ochee is six, seven miles from Drax Hall, mon. Same road.'
'Why didn't Mrs Booth... Alison go with him?'
'Him buy the lady a present. Why not, mon?' Sam looked at Lawrence, then down at the beach, where Alison was standing up, prepared to go back into the water.